Reviewed: December 2, 2007
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Digital Leisure

Developer
Digital Leisure

Released: October 4, 2007
Genre: Action
Players: 1

6
7
8
7
7.2

System Requirements:

Spring of 1984 saw the release of Space Ace, the second laserdisc video game from award-winning animator, Don Bluth. Following in the footsteps of Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace featured stunning feature-quality animation and gameplay that relied entirely on memorization and reflexes. And much like Dragon’s Lair, I was consumed by the experience, dumping countless quarters (it cost a $1 to play) into the machine until I had mastered all the moves…then people paid for me to play while they watched.

Space Ace follows the adventures of the suave hero Ace. At the start of the game, the villainous Commander Borf attacks Ace with the "Infanto Ray", a weapon that transforms him into an adolescent version of himself, and kidnaps his girlfriend Kimberly. It is up to the player to guide Dexter - Ace's younger incarnation - through a series of obstacles in pursuit of Borf, in order to rescue Kimberly and prevent Borf using the Infanto Ray to conquer Earth.

Space Ace HD boasts about a “high definition film transfer” as well as digitally remastered 5.1 surround sound. It all sounds good on the box, but just how much better can a 23 year old video game get?

The nature of the game was memorization. You only had five possible actions; up, down, left, right, and firing your ray gun. But Space Ace took the formula a bit further by giving you three skill levels to choose from; Cadet, Captain, or Ace. Only by playing the game on Ace level would you see all the action sequences whereas Cadet offered about half the game experience.

Also new to the gameplay was the ability to “Energize!” at predetermined locations. If you tapped the action button Dexter would morph into the mighty Ace for a few moments. This gave the player the option to either take the easy escape route (as Dexter) or increase the difficulty with more action inputs (as Ace) and delight the spectators.

Even though the game prompted your next action with flashes of light overlaid on the animation, these visual cues only allowed for about one second of error and you could never win by reflexes alone. Timing was critical, and if you got too confident and started pressing the joystick or button too soon you would also die. Only after several dozen (or was it hundreds) of tokens did you finally master the timing and find your "zone". Then you were unstoppable...you were "Space Ace".

The gameplay is as simple (and boring) as it gets. You control Dexter/Ace, the hero, through dozens of animated action scenes. At critical points in the action you are given a small window of opportunity to interact with the game by moving with the arrow keys or performing some context-sensitive action with the spacebar like firing your ray gun or using an underwater air tank, or even Energizing into Ace. Act too soon or react to late and you get to witness one of the dozens of horrible, yet humorous death scenes.

Unlike Dragon’s Lair and it’s randomized action scenes, Space Ace follows a more direct and linear path. Depending on the skill level chosen before you start the game, additional scenes may be inserted into the story as well as mirror images of previous sequences. The story and the action is far more reaching than Dragon’s Lair, taking you to a space station, alien planets, and all sorts of cool locations like a roller-skating maze, underwater eel lair, exciting motorcycle chase, and many more all leading up to the exciting final battle with Borf.

The only fault in the gameplay lies in the hardware we are forced to play it on. When Dragon's Lair debuted it was being played on a 12" laserdisc on an industrial laserdisc player with amazing seek and random access times. The way the game is laid out today, each animated sequence is its own unique WMV file (about 1,500 of them). If you play each scene flawlessly (which includes using the “Energize!” prompt all the time), the movie plays out without a hiccup, but if you miss a move or action input the game then has to load the appropriate death scene.

Back in 1983 this was seamless, but today, even after two decades of technological advancements, even the 16x DVD-ROM in the system requirements just doesn't have fast enough access. This results in frequent and annoying pauses where the screen will flash to black for 1-2 seconds as your computer scans the DVD for the next scene.

Dumping the entire game to a fast and defragged hard drive will get you pretty close to the original seamlessness of 1984. You can pick and choose which video format and quality you want to copy or you can copy the entire game at the expense of 7.8GB of hard disk space.

Definitely worth mentioning, this is the first Space Ace for the PC since the 1984 laserdisc to feature ALL of the scenes from the original game including their mirrored forms. In previous home versions there have always been some scenes removed for whatever reason.

Since the goal is no longer about taking all the tokens out of your pocket, Space Ace HD offers limited lives but unlimited continues, so you can easily beat the game in one sitting without having to start from the beginning after you die. There is also a scoring mode, which I never really figured out. It keeps a running score, but resets when you run out of lives and have to continue. And if you don’t feel like playing the game, you can simply “watch” the game play out (automatically) and learn what to do in the future.

There are all sorts of artifacts that you usually associate with film. While not nearly as bad as Dragon’s Lair HD, there are still numerous flecks on the screen that look like hair or dust and white specks and dots that randomly pop up all over the scene really take away from the HD hype on the box. In fact, I’d venture to say some of the earlier versions might look slightly better. At least at low res these imperfections aren’t showcased with such perfection. The game still ends many of its sequences with abrupt video and audio cuts.

For all of the work that apparently went into this hi-def transfer, the results are less than thrilling, especially given the fact that I am running this game on about $1,500 worth of new video technology. Artifacts aside, the game looks great running at extreme resolutions and in widescreen. Don Bluth is a masterful animator and you can really tell that a lot of time and care went into the creation of this game.

The game's animation features some traditional rotoscoping, wherein models were built of Ace's spaceship "Star Pac", his motorcycle, and the tunnel in the game's exciting dogfight sequence. These were then filmed and traced over to render moving animated images with very realistic depth and perspective. The colors are rich and vibrant and the characters are delightful. Even the scarier creatures have a humorous side that makes this game great for kids of all ages.

With unlimited continues you can easily finish this game in less than two hours, and the more you play the faster you can do it. Nothing really changes, so there is little motivation to replay the game other than to show off your skills to your friends and perhaps improve your score.

This version has also been remastered for HD video and surround sound to offer the best visuals since the original, despite the random glitches from the aging source material.

Despite the great looks and sound and even the entertaining, albeit limited gameplay, this game falls short of HD greatness. I was seeing way too many video glitches that I never saw on the Xbox version, and there are still disc seeking issues that create annoying hiccups in the gameplay unless you dump the disc to your hard drive.

But there is no denying that Space Ace is a timeless classic, and this latest version is easily the best way to experience it on the PC. Adults and kids alike won’t be able to resist the mesmerizing visuals and the memorizing gameplay.